434 DEAR HACKER

434 DEAR HACKER

Dear 2600: In the past, you have printed letters telling tales of woe about flawed

college telephone systems. I recently discovered an interesting flaw in the telephone system at my university. All students living in the dorms must dial “8” first to dial out on local and long distance calls. However, if one merely dials “7” instead of “8” before any long dis- tance call, the call doesn’t show up on your bill. Now those are the kind of flaws that I like.

Mr. Upsetter They’re also the kind that don’t last very long.

Dear 2600:

I learned of a trick that might be of interest to you. To get someone else to pay for your long distance calls when you’re in a payphone, grab the phone book. Dial 0 and the number you want to reach. Then tell the operator, when she comes on, that you want to bill this call to another phone. When they ask if someone is home to verify it, say, “I think so.” For selection of the number, there are several methods to use.

(a) The number of someone you know (and presumably hate), using the name of one of their loved ones who might ask them to take the charge.

(b) A number at random from the phone book, using the name of the person who is listed for the number.

(c) A number at random from the phone book, using a bland name like Joe, John, Frank, Bill, Sam, et cetera. (This works more effec- tively on phones designated “Children’s Phone” and phones in rich neighborhoods.)

(d) A person’s office. After hours, many people have answering ser- vices covering their calls, and every once in a while they might accept charges if you use the name of the person who employs the service.

Warning: be prepared to hang up, especially on (b) and (c). The odds of actually succeeding are low, but not as low as you might think. (The

A C U LT U R E O F R E B E L S

person who told me this trick pulled it off the first time he tried it, and has done it twice since. Most of the time, nobody’s home.) Also, if you’re doing this from a payphone, it’s practically impossible to get yourself caught unless you’re trying.

There is the difficulty of running into the same operator twice or thrice, but this can be avoided by having two or three people running shifts calling four or five times in a row and then passing it along to the next person. It’s easier for the caller to recognize the operator’s voice than vice versa, especially since they speak first, but be prepared to pass the phone to another person quickly.

(In case you’re wondering, my friend is a bored dorm student who gets desperate to talk to his girlfriend who lives several hundred miles away.)

Birmingham We’ll be honest. Your methods are as old as the hills. Apart from that, simply bill-

ing calls to another person really doesn’t have all that much to do with hacking. But continuing to figure out ways around the system does. We hope you know the difference.

Dear 2600:

I am writing to thank you for your excellent article on COCOTs. I am glad that someone finally told how it really is.

Recently, I was a victim of a collect call placed from a COCOT. I was charged close to $30 for a ten-minute call. The offending company was “Operator Assistance Network.” I quickly called my local phone company and had the charges deleted. But I’m sure many other people who get victimized by such rip-offs don’t do anything about it.

Taking the suggestion from the article’s author (The Plague), a group of friends and myself have formed a neighborhood patrol called C.O.P. (COCOT Obliteration Patrol). By the name, I’m sure you can fig- ure out what we do. To date we have eliminated about 65 COCOTs, and only three of those have been repaired. We prefer to “behead” the COCOTs by removing the handset, thus innocent people are not